Re: GP's Opening Hours

Re: It wasn't terrorists...

Absolutely right there. There were almost certainly some children on the flight, and they would use the toilet, and the camera would snap inappropriate pictures of them, meaning the perpetrator would be guilty of child porn offences.

How much time do Fanbois spend browsing on Apple's website? Yes probably more than the amount of time Fandroids spend on it, but in any case I don't think Apple has any third party advertising on their website.

They will be looking at newspaper websites, and shopping sites for all sorts of other kit, and that's where the third party advertising is.

Re: The Golden era

Re: 2013 closes on a joyous news note!

"Why don't the big email providers fix the spam problem?"

The spam filters on my email server reject 96.5% of all incoming emails. Probably about 5% of what does get through is spam. So assuming no false positives, that means 96.5% of all email is spam that is blocked, 0.2% is spam that is not blocked, and 3.3% is non-spam and that my spam filter correctly identifies 99.8% of all spam.

The big email providers do put a lot of effort into blocking spam, but getting from 99.8% to 100% is very hard. They can possibly manage more than 99.8% because they have millions of users clicking on their "report spam" buttons" which I don't have, but even so, you aren't going to get to 100%.

Your email box may be bad, but I don't think you appreciate just how much worse it would be if your email service was completely unfiltered.

Re: Apple utility patents?

A utility patent is a patent on an invention that actually does something, as opposed to a design patent which protects the distinctive look of a product, such as the three stripes on Adidas products, or allegedly the rounded corners on an iPhone.

Re: Overwhelmed by complaints

If there were some actual meaningful punishments for breaking the law, like for example a few weeks in prison and criminal asset recovery procedures, combined with proper enforcement so that the criminals actually face these punishments, then maybe there wouldn't be so many people breaking the law, and therefore so many complaints.

The reason so many people break the law at the moment is because they know they can get away with it.

Re: Drain cleaner

Re: Drain cleaner

The question is more about what you can do if your site is blocked and as a result, people can't visit it. We already have the same situation with sites being blocked from mobile networks, so we know how mobile telcos respond to complaints about sites being wrongfully blocked.

Re: Tulips ! @ Jonathan 29

Re: Tulips !

Probably most people didn't spend 2500 Dutch Florins a time on tulip bulbs. It was after all a massive amount of money in those days. They would have bought something like daffodil bulbs instead, or they would have decided not to bother with spring flowers in their gardens.

Nevertheless, despite massive inflation in every other product since 1637, tulips are still considerably cheaper today than they were 376 years ago.

Re: Makes your choices and takes your chances

Re: @AndrueC

"Interestingly, El Reg were invited to our first industry meeting and we gave them tea, coffee and biscuits - this article is how they repay us? Ungrateful B@stards - no biscuits for you lot next time."

Re: Not convinced

Re: They used to be free...

People mostly use call cards for international calls, and the call card operators generally offer a geographic number for their mobile customers. The other option if you have enough data available on your data plan, or unmetered wifi, is to use Skype to dial the freephone number.

Re: hmmmm

Sales growth is less than last year, which is not quite the same thing. The year before last, the market was basically owned by Apple with a few other people selling things that were the same price as the iPad and not as good, or cheaper than the iPad and completely rubbish.

Last year was the first time there was a real challenge to Apple and the market expanded rapidly. Apple lost their market-leading position, but still sold more than the year before. This year, the market is still growing, but not by quite as much.

Re: The wages are rubbish - so is the tax

The cost of living is much cheaper here than in Australia. While the exchange rate for the Australian Dollar is about parity with the US Dollar, in terms of purchasing power parity, it is more like 2 Australian Dollars to the US Dollar.

Re: Subtle thinking

Have a look at a currency broker rather than using your bank to transfer money. Typically the fees are about 4% + £9 and the money goes into the recipient's bank account as a local domestic payment in their own currency. The company I work for uses Moneycorp and HiFX for international transfers. Other currency brokers exist.

The main problem with bitcoin is the exchanges. They are mostly unregulated, some of them are ponzi schemes, and they are not particularly cheap, or particularly fast at converting between real money and bitcoin.

Re: Because the PC is dying?

It is mostly due to the fact that everyone has a PC now, and they buy a new PC when the old one breaks rather than to get the latest shiny.

Give me a list of things you can do on a Windows 8.1 PC that you can't do on a Windows XP PC. There isn't really anything. Windows XP lets you read things on the web, communicate via email and Skype, play games, run Word, Excel and Powerpoint, run accounts software, run photoshop or other photo editing software, run your line of business applications. Basically it does everything people want a PC to do, so getting a new PC is like getting a new washing machine.

Ballmer doesn't get it

Saying that the PC market is dead because tablets are taking over is like saying that the oven market is dead because electric kettles are taking over.

Kettles are good for preparing hot drinks and pot noodles, much better than an oven, however they are completely at for example making toast.

Tablets are good for reading things, watching things and looking at things. Much better than the PC, unless you happen to be sitting at the PC when you want to read, watch or look at the thing. Tablets are completely useless at inputting things into the system if you want to type more than a couple of words.

For example, if you work on the road, a tablet would be good for looking at your job list to see where you need to go next, to tap on a few buttons to let the people back at base know you've completed the job, and maybe enter a few words or tick a few boxes to say what you found and what you did. If you need to prepare a report of more than a couple of sentences, then you probably want to get out the laptop to do it. If you are back at base scheduling the work, and entering notes about what needs to be done, then you will do that on a desktop machine, not a tablet.

Re: Will Apple still be around to see it's completion?

Re: Multiple nationality causes confusion!

If you find yourself in an English court, the magistrate or judge will look at whether or not you broke English laws. They don't care about the laws in any other country, and that includes Scotland or Northern Ireland.

Re: Lets test this "law" thing @Martin

Re: Lets test this "law" thing

Yes to all of them, but in 1. you are outside the reach of the courts in the relevant country within the UK. If you are in another EU country, they can get a European Arrest Warrant to bring you back to the UK to face justice. VPNs are not relevant to the discussion.

Re: Start with the end in mind

Yes, but for that you are probably better keeping a copy of the transaction report or similar in plain text or pdf format. It won't be of any use for restoring the data back to the system, but that is not the purpose of the data, it will be easier to view the data manually, even if you switch to a new computer system in 5 years time that stores things in a completely different format.

It is not just about numbers here

Taking your example, what use is a 3 month old copy of the database?

If you lose your database due to hardware failure or environmental problem (eg fire, flood, theft), you want to restore to the most recent copy of the data, and as quickly as possible. Ideally you would have a real-time offsite mirror of the system that takes over immediately.

If you lose data due to software issues such as data corruption, a failed update or security issues, then you want to roll back to the most recent copy before that problem arose, and hopefully it isn't going to take you three months to notice there is a problem.

The system described in this article doesn't have that many recent or real-time copies of the data, so it isn't actually very good, but you have lots of old copies that are pretty much useless other than as poor substitutes for newer versions.

Re: Hmmm

No it doesn't. That isn't the intention of it. The intention is that it makes them less attractive to young people so they won't take up the habit. The ban hasn't been in place long enough to see if that will work or not. However the tobacco companies think it is a bad idea, so that almost certainly means it is a good idea.

Translation?

Can someone on the El-Reg storage desk tranlate this management-speak drivel into English?

If you have only one copy of a piece of data, there are various things that could happen to it to cause you to lose it. You have multiple copies in difference places and in different fomats and with different levels of accessibility, because you want to reduce the probablility that whatever hazard you experience will destroy all your copies of the data.

Another copy will guard against hardware failure. Snapshops will guard against user error. Offsite copies will guard against environmental disasters such as fire, severe weather and theft. Making them less accessible will guard against software problems such as viruses and security incidents.